Human Rights in Complex Environments

Human Analytics LLC recently served as a panel member at the ASIS International 61st Annual Seminar and Exhibits (ASIS 2015) held in Anaheim, CA from September 28th to October 1st. The annual ASIS International event is the security industry’s top educational event and included over five days of exhibits, presentations, and educational sessions to cover emerging developments and topics of importance to the global security industry.

The educational session consisted of a panel moderated by Dr. Marc Siegel of the ASIS International Global Standards Initiative and featured Pete Dordal of GardaWorld International, Lisa DuBrock of Radian Compliance LLC, and James Schmitt from Human Analytics LLC. Material was also presented from leading experts Chris Mayer of the Department of Defense and Dr. Ian Ralby of IR Consilium, LTD. to elaborate on U.S. Department of Defense requirements and legal implications of the standard. Pete Dordal presented an informative case study on GardaWorld’s implementation of the PSC.1 standard, while Lisa DuBrock focused on specific details and considerations of the overall Quality Assurance Management System (QAMS) aspects of PSC.1. James Schmitt completed the presentations by focusing on the significant number of key human rights provisions of PSC.1 and how these relate to private security companies, their clients, and their partners. Dr. Marc Siegel, as the panel moderator, facilitated questions from the audience as well as presenting additional questions related to PSC.1 to the panel members.

As part of its presentation, Human Analytics LLC covered key human rights provisions of the standard to include the requirements and rationale for companies to establish grievance mechanisms for populations impacted by private security company operations, the need and benefit for companies to publicly communicate their Statement of Conformance with the PSC.1 standard, as well as a company’s responsibility to assess human rights risk in their operations, to include their supply chain. A copy of Human Analytics’ presentation can be found here.

The PSC.1 standard is now recognized internationally as the most detailed international risk management framework relevant to security company operations. It is viewed as the industry standard and provides auditable criteria.

The educational session, “ANSI/ASIS PSC.1 Standard: Enhancing Management of Security Operations”, was designed for companies to better understand and successfully implement the new standard which is becoming increasingly required by both public and private sector utilizers of private security companies. “It was so important to see the growing number of companies that are committed to implementing the PSC.1 standard, or have actually done so already,” one participant said after the session. “It is not only the PSCs themselves that have moved to embrace the PSC.1 standard, it is also the organizations and government agencies that utilize PSCs and have made it a contractual requirement.” The session was attended by a number of representatives, to include individuals from private security providers, independent consultants, government, trade association, and industry.